THE WATER SHREW 131 



tetragonurus has been dealt with under araneus ; russula and leucodon 

 are each a Crocidura, while carinatus is evidently a water shrew ; con- 

 strictus is a doubtful form, described from young in the nest and perhaps 

 a Crocidura. Like Pallas, Hermann was slow to publish, and his manu- 

 scripts were copied by Zimmermann, Schreber, and others, who are 

 sometimes cited, although wrongly, for Hermann's names, while Her- 

 mann's own work was held back until after his death. 



Many years later, Duvernoy, in setting himself to explain Hermann's 

 species, added another synonym in his own hermanni, and introduced 

 confusion by including fodiens and tetragonurus in a single new genus, 

 Hydrosorex. His description of fodiens correctly indicated a water 

 shrew, but the skull which he figured in correspondence with it was 

 that of a true Sorex, a fact which induced Jenyns to doubt the identity 

 of British fodiens with that of Duvernoy, and to suggest the use of 

 Shaw's bicolor (1791) for the former {Mag. Zool. and Bot, 1838, 37). The 

 truth did not, however, escape Nathusius, who, in Wiegmann's Archiv 

 filr Naturgeschichte, 1838, i., 19-47, reviewed the knowledge of shrews 

 at that date, as did also de Selys-Longchamps in the year following. 



Meanwhile, in 1805, Sowerby had bestowed the name of ciliatus upon 

 a melanic English specimen, and Geoffroy's remifer (181 1) was based 

 upon a similar one from France, his lineatus of the same date being 

 probably the black and white form of the same locality. 



This differentiation of the Water Shrew into two forms, the one 

 dusky, the other with white underside, met with wide acceptance amongst 

 European naturalists ; but those of Britain, except Bingley, ignored their 

 countryman Shaw's bicolor, and adopted in preference Geoffroy's remifer, 

 hence the presence of that term and the expression " Oared Shrew " ^ 

 in the works of many British writers of the nineteenth century. 



Gray's pennantii was in 1837 applied to specimens from England 

 and France, but in 1839 he restricted it to "our English species"; his 

 linneana, from North Bothnia, Sweden, and Lehmann's macrourus, may 

 represent sub-species. 



Shaw's bicolor (1791) is, without doubt, the proper technical name of 

 the British Water Shrew, being the earliest to appear in the work of 

 a British writer (see under Geographical Variation). 



Local names : — Like the Pygmy, the present species is probably not 

 always distinguished from the Common Shrew. The following names 

 are said to have direct application to it : — Blind-mouse of the fen-men 

 (Pennant) ; famh-uisge = " water mole " (Alston), and lavellan of Scotland ; 

 otter shrew of Cheshire (Coward and Oldham) ; water mole ; water- 

 rannie; white-breasted shrew. 



' " The Oared Shrew {Crossopus ciliatus) " appeared again, as well as the Water 

 Shrew, in British mammals as arranged by George Abbey, Tke Balance of Nature, 

 1909, 5- 



